Kevin Maguire: Plastic patriots inflicted huge harm with Boris's bad Brexit
Foaming and frothing plastic patriots inflicted unprecedented national self-harm so I trust the shrieking gang will insist on standing in the longest passport queues then wait until everybody sensible goes through before using quicker e-gates.
Because Starmer's pragmatically ending a few of many nightmares created by lying Con man Boris Johnson's bad Brexit. End of.
More's the pity the Prime Minister isn't preparing to take Britain back into the Single Market, Custom's Union and European Union itself when our country's best deal was membership.
Yet Starmer's achievements are pushing at an open door while Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are stuck in the past, rival Right-whingers fighting old battles in a new age. Their allergic reaction to anything and everything to do with Europe doesn't represent the public mood and the pair are walking into a Labour trap.
Only a measly 11% of voters think quitting the EU has been a success while just 30% believe Britain was right to leave. Contrast that piddling support for a failing Brexit with the 55% who are now Rejoiners and 64% favouring closer relations with our European neighbours.
US loose cannon Donald Trump blasting away at European countries, including the UK, underlines why Britain's prosperity and security depend on an EU which accounts for half our international trade.
If fishing was sold down the river then Johnson not Starmer was guilty, Starmer's deal essentially rolling over Johnson's trawler agreement for a dozen more years while cutting holes in red tape.
The Salmon Scotland trade body welcomed the deal, Johnson's Brexit bureaucracy costing exporters sending 500 lorries a week to Europe around £3million a year.
Starmer has a serious job ahead selling the package but Tory and Reform UK hysteria is as dishonest as it is comical.
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Rhyl Journal
26 minutes ago
- Rhyl Journal
Starmer hails ‘breakthrough' on security guarantees after Ukraine talks
The Prime Minister was one of several European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, who travelled to Washington on Monday as Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with the US President. Sir Keir said work with the US on what the security guarantees would entail could start as soon as Tuesday. 'The two outcomes were a real significant breakthrough when it comes to security guarantees, because we're now going to be working with the US on those security guarantees,' he told the BBC. 'We've tasked our teams, some of them are even arriving tomorrow, to start the detailed work on that.' The Prime Minister will co-chair a call on Tuesday morning of the so-called 'coalition of the willing', a group of nations looking to help Ukraine that he has been leading with Mr Macron. Mr Trump said he had spoken directly with Vladimir Putin to begin planning a meeting between the Russian leader and Mr Zelensky, which will then be followed by a three-way meeting involving himself. The US president said Moscow will 'accept' multinational efforts to guarantee Ukraine's security. Mr Zelensky, meanwhile, said he was 'ready' for bilateral and trilateral meetings. But he told reporters following the White House meeting that if Russia does 'not demonstrate a will to meet, then we will ask the United States to act accordingly'. Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said the US and Europe would 'do more' on tariffs and sanctions against Russia if the country 'is not playing ball' on direct talks with Ukraine, in comments to Fox News. Sir Keir described the talks as 'good and constructive' and said there was a 'real sense of unity' between the European leaders, Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky. He said Mr Trump's plans to arrange the bilateral and trilateral meetings showed a recognition that Ukraine must be involved in talks. 'That is a recognition of the principle that on some of these issues, whether it's territory or the exchange of prisoners, or the very serious issue of the return of children, that is something where Ukraine must be at the table.' Mr Trump called the talks 'very good'. 'During the meeting we discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, which guarantees would be provided by the various European countries, with a co-ordination with the United States of America,' he posted on his Truth Social platform. 'Everyone is happy about the possibility of PEACE for Russia/Ukraine. 'At the conclusion of the meetings, I called president Putin and began arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between president Putin and president Zelensky. 'After the meeting takes place, we will have a trilat which would be the two presidents plus myself.' The US president met with Mr Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday, where he declared there was 'no deal until there's a deal' to end more than three years of fighting in eastern Europe. 'The Alaska summit reinforced my belief that while difficult, peace is within reach and I believe, in a very significant step, President Putin agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine,' he said on Monday. 'And this is one of the key points that we need to consider.' He later said: 'We also need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory taken into consideration the current line of contact.' Future three-way talks 'have a good chance' of stopping the conflict, the US president said. But he appeared to share conflicting views on whether a ceasefire was necessary to stop the war. 'I don't think you need a ceasefire,' he originally said, before later explaining that, 'all of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace'. Mr Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, had suggested over the weekend that measures similar to Nato's article five mutual defence provision – that an attack on one member is an attack on the entire bloc – could be offered by the US without Kyiv joining the alliance. Sir Keir welcomed plans for 'article five-style guarantees' during Monday's talks and said that they would fit with the work of his coalition of the willing group of countries. He said to Mr Trump: 'Your indication of security guarantees, of some sort of article five-style guarantees, fits with what we've been doing with the coalition of the willing, which we started some months ago, bringing countries together and showing that we were prepared to step up to the plate when it came to security. 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Mr Zelensky said: 'We are very happy with the president that all the leaders are here and security in Ukraine depends on the United States and on you and on those leaders who are with us in our hearts.'
Daily Record
26 minutes ago
- Daily Record
Fox News halted for breaking Donald Trump news as he makes 'sad' admission
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The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Pity the beat cops now that Britain's top policeman has banned them from dancing at the Notting Hill carnival
It's a world in flames. Too much antisocial behaviour, too many street gangs, too few crimes being solved – but fear not, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has a plan to fight back. Go to the Notting Hill carnival this weekend, he's told his officers. Keep the peace, lay down the law – and I'd better not catch you dancing. He's right to be concerned. Dancing policemen are a menace. They undermine the tradition and the public's trust. The Laughing Policeman was bad enough, but dancing ones? You wonder how they ever got through the vetting and the training. From now on, perhaps it will be a specific part of the vetting and the training. 'Regan, you almost made it through, but when we played that bit of Rihanna in the final module, you shimmied a bit and there was a definite head bob. I'm sorry, this job isn't for you.' There are many problems in the running of and the policing of the Notting Hill carnival. The numbers are too big, the west London space too small. We know there's crime: two murders last year and melees in which more than 60 officers injured. No one underestimates the challenge. Last week, Tory members of the London Assembly called for City Hall to take over the running of the event, and mooted once again the idea that it could move to a park, Hyde Park perhaps, and become ticketed. No one close to the event and its tradition wants that. But everyone knows that, security-wise, things have to change. Will motionless, ear-plugged officers do that? I'm not sure that's the eureka moment. I can't quite equate the difficulty of keeping roads unblocked and hyped up young men from maiming themselves and others with the dereliction of rogue officers momentarily shaking a leg to Mighty Sparrow, Sean Paul or Shaggy. How does that work in fact? Is that the officer who says: 'There is a punch up over there and I know I should intervene, but I do like this banging tune, and I'm having a nice dance, so I'll wait until it's finished?' I don't think any officer would do that, and I doubt the commissioner really thinks so either. The statement from Scotland Yard says: 'Almost 7,000 officers will be deployed to this year's event. They are there to keep revellers safe, not to join in the revelling. We want officers to positively engage with the carnivalgoers while staying vigilant at all times and remaining able to respond and intervene swiftly as necessary. They can't do this if they are dancing. The standards of behaviour expected as part of the policing operation will be communicated clearly before the event, just as they have been in recent years.' On its face, this last bit appears to reveal that those who have got jiggy wit it at carnival in recent years have been dancing disobediently, perhaps with intent, perhaps with malice aforethought. As for those who have actually danced in actual contact with the revellers, well, bring back Keir Starmer's all-night courts. There is, of course, a simpler explanation for this new diktat, rather than any genuine nexus between carnival crime and the beat officer who likes the beats. It's not really that too many officers over-engage: it's that occasionally one makes a human connection, and someone takes a photo of that, and it ends up on the TV and in the papers – because little else happens on a bank holiday – and the rightwing press goes full tonto about woke coppers who talk to folk they should be tasering. Before you know it, someone is saying that the commissioner himself is a woke disciple who secretly loves Afrobeats and privately takes the knee on Congolese religious holidays, and that we really need new leadership, of the kind that Nigel Farage would seek out were he to reach No 10. And all of that grouching is bad for the top team at Scotland Yard, who'll be forgiven by the right if they never catch another criminal, so long as they don't go woke. So the best thing for them, short of stopping the music itself, is to stop the thin blue line dancing, even for a smiley snapshot. And so they have. It's all quite funny, and it's all quite sad. Because those pictures of communal revelry between the public and law enforcementwere sometimes a bit cringe and often a bit stagey, but they spoke to a desire of some officers to present as a police service rather than a police force – and showed an enthusiasm from carnivalgoers to embrace that. And for those who weren't there, those moments – like the time in 2017 when a PC Daniel Graham threw his shapes and went viral – conveyed a world that doesn't always exist, but one that most of us would like to see. We'll have the old pictures as an archive, but pity the officers deployed to carnival this year: concerned about the crush, concerned about the crime (with optimists at the Mail already predicting 'three days of carnage') and now concerned that a surveillance camera might catch them twerking in the line of duty. Jeez, isn't policing dangerous enough as it is? Hugh Muir is a Guardian columnist
